


Everything is Brand New.

by CertifiedPissWizard



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, M/M, did i tear up some during this? maybe don't judge me, everything could be solved by communication but they're bad at it, its just sad and wistful and gay, they love each other but
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2019-12-26 16:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18285689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CertifiedPissWizard/pseuds/CertifiedPissWizard
Summary: It doesn’t really click until he’s staring up at a redwood tree that’s older than he’ll ever be that Barclay realizes something. He doesn’t even know if Indrid is even alive.





	1. Chapter 1

Barclay leaves in the middle of the night because he can’t take it anymore. He can’t stand the way Indrid has looked since the Silver Bridge and his failure to stop people from dying in the collapse. Barclay can’t stand the way Indrid looks at him like Barclay is going to leave because of his failure, like Barclay doesn’t love him anymore, couldn’t love him anymore because of that. He can’t stand the self-deprecation anymore, the moping, the refusal to climb out of bed in the ‘bago unless Barclay drags him out. Barclay can’t stand any of it anymore, so he leaves and proves Indrid right. He looks to the future, looks to what he would have to feel through to prove Indrid wrong and says to himself that he can’t. 

He leaves in the middle of the night, doesn’t leave a note, just throws his clothes into a bag and walks out. He knows where to get a car. He’d been preparing for a while. He ran through it all in the cold night air, because if he didn’t focus on it then all he would be able to focus on is his partner laying on the bed asleep and how he was just walking out on Indrid. He turns his focus to the night air and the grass under his shoes and the walk that he has ahead of himself.

Barclay walks for around an hour before he gets to the side of some small country road where there is a car left there. He slips in, grabs the keys from where they were in the glove box, and he starts driving. He thinks about where he wants to go next, where he wants his future to be, and he tries not to think about the past. 

 

Indrid wakes up and is alone. He closes his eyes, opens them, forces himself to breathe. He saw this coming, knew this would happen, couldn’t even muster up a hint of ability to care to stop it. He lays there in bed for what feels like hours, trying to figure out what he could have done differently. He tries to figure out what he could have done to fix himself, to save their relationship. He lays there thinking about it until he feels hungry. Then he gets out of bed and wanders over to the kitchen area. Just because he failed, because Barclay left, doesn’t mean that Indrid will somehow be able to survive without eating. Barclay would be sad if he hadn’t left and Indrid didn’t eat something.

Somewhere between getting the eggs out of the fridge and starting to eat the eggs Indrid found himself shaking. He knew that it was going to happen, that Barclay would leave. Indrid had done nothing. He had been so paralyzed by his own guilt, by the feeling that it was inevitable. He lost out on one of the best things in his life because of it. He eats his eggs with shaking hands and thinks of what he would need to do next. Time moves forward, he tells himself. Time moves forward and so must he.

He thinks of Sylvain. They still hadn’t found a new court seer. He couldn’t go back to that life, but he could still aid his home. It would be easier than trying to deal with Barclay’s absence, easier than dealing with the things left behind in the ‘bago, easier than trying to figure out how to pick up doing what he did and what Barclay did and combining them into his schedule. Indrid lets himself feel one more moment of self-deprecation. He wallows in it for a moment. Then he stands to make some coffee. He’s not caffeinated enough to deal with this shit.

 

It’s three weeks after Barclay walked out on Indrid. It finally really hits home that he’s walked out. He’s splashing some water on his face in the bathroom at a rest stop to try and wake himself up so that he doesn’t fall asleep at the wheel. While he’s walking out the door he sees one of those scales that claims to be able to tell your fortune. He freezes, stares, thinks of Indrid. Some people push their ways around him, and he stumbles over to the scale. It’s stupid, but what’s the worst that can happen, and so he puts a quarter into the machine. He’s lost one pound and the fortune the machine gives him is “Soon you will find love.” 

He clutches the fortune tightly in his fist and rushes his way out of the bathroom, out through the rest stop towards his car. He wants to drive as far away as he can, cross the county line, cross the state line. He doesn’t want to have to think about Indrid or the small piece of paper that he still has clutched in his hand. He reaches his hand out and drops the fortune in the seat next to him.

Barclay cries. Loss is not an easy thing, and it has always been hard for Barclay. His leaving Sylvain had been eased by Indrid, and now he has no hints of home, of familiarity other than the small shard of crystal he has hanging around his neck. He cries, clutching onto the crystal, wondering in the smallest, most remote recesses of his mind what the other people in the parking lot would think if the noticed him crying. 

He cries until he has a dehydration headache, and then he cries some more before tearing out of the parking lot. He drives and drives, the landscape blurring around him. He drives until he grows hungry and then pulls into a diner. He sits in the car, and he thinks about what he wants to order. He thinks he might go for some pancakes. Indrid never really cared too much about them so Barclay never made any for him on their anniversary unlike hashbrowns- and Barclay isn’t thinking about Indrid.

 

Indrid slouches against the outer wall of a small Mom and Pop store. He is cold and bundled in less coats than he needs but more than would allow for full arm movement. He opens a carton of eggnog and starts knocking it back. He does his best to ignore how it has too much nutmeg in it. He tries to ignore how Barclay always seemed to put in the exact right amount of nutmeg even though he never did any sort of measuring when he made nog. Indrid tries to not think about why he went in to get eggnog. 

It’s been two months since Barclay left, and Indrid has had to adjust in a large way. He still is. It’s hard. He doesn’t like it, and Sylvain finally has a new Seer, and he can’t go back home, and he doesn’t know what to do next, and everything is just so so so much, future, past, present. It’s all just a lot. He looks ahead and doesn’t see any sort of answers, where to drive next, what to do for money, whether he’ll call Barclay, whether he should. 

Indrid does not like uncertainties. Maybe, just maybe, that might be one of the reasons that things didn’t really last out with Barclay. Maybe, maybe he shouldn’t have taken one hit and used it in his head as a way of saying that you can’t change the future. There are multiple outcomes, maybe focusing on the likely ones can lead to better endings slipping through the cracks. Maybe it wasn’t just his fault in how he felt after what happened, not just in how he behaved, but how it took his attitude and changed it. Maybe it was an issue with that. Barclay would probably give him that sad look that says that Indrid stumbled across something a bit late. He had never liked being on the receiving end of that look. What he wouldn’t give to be on the receiving end of it now.

He could call Barclay. He knows that he could, he wants to. The concept of picking up a phone and calling, of apologizing, of asking to if not go back to the way things were to at least be friends, to at least be friendly. Indrid thinks about it, thinks about grabbing a phone impulsively, and then he looks forward. He looks through the futures where he does, looks at the conversations, the likely outcomes, the unlikely ones. He ways them together. He doesn’t like how many of those unlikely futures there are. 

 

Barclay isn’t enjoying California as much as he had thought that he would. He thought that he would just love the varying terrain in the different parts of the state. He thought that he would love the deserts, the beaches, the mountains. He thought that he’d enjoy going to all of the tourist traps and national parks and walking on the beaches. He thought that he would maybe enjoy San Francisco, enjoy the ocean air, the breezes. He thought that maybe he would enjoy so much of the city, so much of the state, but he really wasn’t.  
The deserts made him think of laying on the ground, outside of the city proper, before Sylvain got attacked. His hand, in Indrid’s hand, their eyes tending to do less stargazing than looking at the other’s face. The temperatures made him think of home, the warmth in the day and the cold at night and how Indrid would- Barlcay keeps trying to shove it out of his mind, keeps trying to pretend that it isn’t something that hurts anymore. The thing is that it does, though. It hurts that he left and it hurts that Indrid hasn’t called and it hurts that he’s alone.

It doesn’t really click until he’s staring up at a redwood tree that’s older than he’ll ever be that Barclay realizes something. He doesn’t even know if Indrid is even alive. He’s just assumed this whole time that Indrid was still alive, even though he might not be. Indrid might have died and Barclay would never have known, and maybe Indrid was going to get up and start being Indrid Indrid again instead of sad Indrid. He didn’t know then, and he doesn’t know now. He’s standing there, looking up at a tree that will dwarf his lifespan, that already has dwarfed his lifespan, and Barclay can’t help but wonder whether or not in one hundred years Barclay will have greatly exceeded Indrid’s lifespan. He hopes not; he fears so.  
 

It’s been around a whole year since Barlcay left, and it’s New Years. Indrid stares up at the sky, ignoring the way the cold seeps into his body. He searches for the same constellations that he and Barclay had looked at last time that they were together for New Years. It was two years ago, a year too long. He thinks that he sees them, but they don’t look right. Of course, they don’t. Barclay isn’t there to them with him. Indrid is cold and alone, staring up into an unending sky, feeling like a speck in the eye of some celestial creature. He wishes that someone was there with him to chase that feeling away. He wishes that he had figured his shit out sooner. He wishes that Barclay would suddenly be standing next to him. 

The thing is that Barclay won’t just show up and do that. Indrid could do that, though. He knows where Barclay is, knows that if he just drove for four hours he could be next to Barclay in time for the clock to strike midnight. Indrid wouldn’t be shivering anymore, wouldn’t be seeking out every little thing that reminds him of home, of Barclay. The thing is that Indrid could fix this, could fix things, could go out and tell Barclay that Indrid’s alright, that he hasn’t died, that Barclay shouldn’t feel guilty, that it forced Indrid to start getting himself together. Indrid could go and fix things. He could if he could just force himself to stand, to go back inside the ‘bago, to drive for four hours. 

The thing is that Indrid can’t though. It’s like he physically can’t do it. It’s like the times where he wanted to and needed to do something but he couldn’t get himself to move, to wash some cups, to sweep the floor, to cook some food. It’s like all of those times rolled into one, because this is so much more important than eating vegetables. This is Barclay. The fact that Indrid can’t force his body to move for Barclay feels like a betrayal of the worst sort. He just wants to go home, go to Barclay. He just can’t, though. Barclay deserves better, anyways.


	2. Chapter 2

Years pass, as they are wont to do, and Barclay rolls on into a small town called Kepler. He’s heard about the small community of Sylphs that live there, and he decided to go see it with his own eyes. He still misses Indrid, he’ll admit, and a tiny part of him wants to see if Indrid is there. He hopes so. He hopes that Indrid is okay. He thinks that Indrid is, that he might be, because sometimes when he’s getting gas late at night the payphone at the station will ring. Sometimes it happens before he starts pumping his gas or after he’s done.

The thing is, though, that Barclay has never really had it in him to pick up the phone at those gas station payphones. He doesn’t know what he would say if he picked it up, doesn’t know what he’d say if he’s right and Indrid is the one calling. He doesn’t know what he would say if it wasn’t Indrid. He doesn’t like it, this not knowing.

He used to know what he would say to Indrid. He used to imagine having a conversation with him again, but now? Would he be mad over the radio silence that went on for three years? Would he be glad that Indrid is okay? Would they talk things out? Maybe Indrid is calling because he knows how Barclay would respond, maybe because he needs to call. The issue is, though that Barclay doesn’t know which of those it is. He doesn’t know whether or not Indrid is calling because he misses Barclay or because he looked into the future and saw Barclay either giving him a reason to feel right about the way he felt about himself or giving him absolution.

Barclay can’t find it in himself to pick up the phone as long as he doesn’t know. That’s the issue. He doesn’t want to make it out as though nothing is wrong, as though nothing happened. He doesn’t want to just act as though everything was wrong, as though there was never anything good between them, because there was. There was so much good, and Barclay can’t help but miss it with a fierceness.

 

Indrid likes Alabama during the summers. The temperature is right for his body, he doesn’t shake or shiver at all during it. He likes the winters much less, and he misses Barclay during them with more fierceness than any other time. When it was winter when they were still together, Barclay always was warm, physically, emotionally. Indrid felt warm around him. He doesn’t feel so warm anymore. He wishes Barclay would answer when Indrid calls. He understands why Barclay wouldn’t pick up the phone. Indrid can’t begrudge him that.

The thing is, Indrid doesn’t even know what he would say if Barclay picked up the phone. Would he apologize? Would he just want to talk? Would words spill out, talking about how much he misses Barclay? He honestly isn’t completely sure on why he keeps calling. He wishes that he was, wishes that he was sure so that he could feel one cohesive thing about how Barclay never picks up the damn phone. Maybe Indrid should have called sooner. Maybe things would be different if he had, but he can’t go back and change the fact that he was too much of a coward for so long, so sure that he would receive nothing more than condemnation.

The first time he tried to call Barclay again he was tired. He was tired and sad and wistful, and some old, hunched woman told him to just call whoever he was clearly missing so terribly. Then she asked him to pay for his damn coffee before he ran off to call his boy. Indrid never asked how she knew, although he wishes that he had. He just took the words as a permission that he had been refusing to give himself.

Barclay didn’t pick up the phone when he called; Indrid wasn’t all that surprised. If he had called sooner then Barclay would have picked up. He couldn’t keep living with the if-thens anymore Indrid realized in that moment. It felt like another of those moments where Barclay would have given him one of those looks. Indrid had realized a lot of things since Barclay had left. He wonders how Barclay would respond to who Indrid is now, to how he’s changed from the person Barclay used to know. He wonders if he would be proud.

 

Barclay tried not to be disappointed that Indrid wasn’t in Kepler, hadn’t shown up in Kepler. He tried not to be disappointed that he still wasn’t over him. Barclay tried a lot of things since coming to Kepler. He’d tried staying in one place, and he’d found that it’d suited him a bit better than he’d once thought that it would. He’d started cooking again, too. After all that time travelling, to believe that he’d forgotten how much he’d loved cooking.

He likes the people in Kepler, too. Mama is a strange one. She’s pretty hyper-protective of the Sylphs even though she’s a human. She even put forth a lot of the work into building Amnesty Lodge herself. He can’t help but wonder why, but he hasn’t really planned on asking, same as the other Sylphs. They can’t go home, and they aren’t going to question too heavily the woman who worked to make a safe place for them all to stay in.

The Lodge is a pretty nice place. It’s warm, Indrid would like it. Indrid isn’t there, though. It’s warm and the people are friendly. Barclay does all the cooking he wants. It’s almost idyllic, if he’s being honest. It feels like nothing could go wrong until his second full moon at the lodge. It feels like nothing could go wrong until Barclay is walking in the woods and sees a monster.

This is how Barclay learns about the Pine Guard.

 

Indrid knows. That’s the thing, he knew that Barclay would find out. He knows about the danger Barclay is going to be flinging himself into. Indrid keeps calling, but he can’t go to face that, to face that his- his nothing anymore would be in danger. He can’t because Indrid has always been a bit of a coward at heart. He can’t go and see Barclay, know the risks that he’s putting himself into, and not try and talk him out of it. Barclay would never forgive him that, and he would also not trust Indrid in a combat situation, would think that Indrid wouldn’t- that he would flake out. Indrid wouldn’t, not on Barclay, not like that.

So Indrid stays away. He stays in a dying Sylph community in Alabama, wondering when he’ll get the courage to go to Kepler, if he ever does. Spoiler alert, he thinks wryly to himself, he will. He’s not sure that he quite likes what he sees when he looks towards that point, but what he does know is that when he looks forward that far he likes the futures where he doesn’t go to Kepler even less.

He sits in his Winnebago in a small town in Alabama, watching the community of Sylphs around him start to leave toward Kepler, and he wonders how long it’ll be until Indrid, himself, ends up going.


End file.
